2of11Claudia Ayon started Claudia's Restaurant on Pleasanton Road in San Antonio in November 2016. Before that, she ran Claudia's Tacos, a food truck on Division Street.Photo: Mike Sutter /San Antonio Express-News

Claudia Ayon opened her namesake restaurant in November of 2016 after running Claudia’s Tacos truck on Division Street for four months. The taco-truck spirit of salesmanship abides at Claudia’s with 2-foot-tall yellow letters announcing the cafe’s name against a blue background on this taco-intensive stretch of Pleasanton Road. It’s the kind of place where a softball mom might come by selling popcorn for her daughter’s team or a kid in a dinosaur hoodie might get some free chicles if he roars long enough.

Tacos: Taco trucks translate into brick-and-mortar restaurants so well in part because trucks have neither the patience nor the space for prefab tacos built from steam pans. A cooked-to-order chilaquiles taco allows for crispy tortilla chips just starting to soften in a warm blanket of freshly scrambled eggs mixed with fresh peppers, tomatoes and onions. The heat melts the American cheese to keep it all together in a fresh flour tortilla for just $1.75. The dried-beef density of machacado softens up just enough in scrambled eggs to make a salt-and-texture companion to pico de gallo ($1.99). A first-class taco with eggs and crispy chicharrones takes that texture contrast to the next level ($1.69). Breakfast tacos are three for $2.79 from 6-10 a.m. Monday-Friday.

Tortillas: Claudia’s handmade corn and flour tortillas start fresh and stay flexible to the end, but the fluffy flour tortillas take the prize.

ExpressNews.com newsletters

Delve deeper into the stories affecting San Antonio with the Express-News. Sign up for our newsletters to get email alerts from ExpressNews.com. Unsubscribe any time.

Military City, USA

365 Days of Tacos

Email:

Salsa: The roasted red salsa here glows with seeds, skin and cilantro with a bright acidic heat that makes the pureed jalapeño green seem mild by comparison. But both will light up any taco they touch.

Mike Sutter is the restaurant critic and a food writer for the Express-News. Before joining the Taste team in 2016, he was a restaurant critic, editor and designer at the Austin American-Statesman and editor of the website FedManWalking.com. He’s been a guest on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Radio, the Cooking Channel’s “Eat Street” and KUT’s “Field and Feast.” His work has appeared on BonAppetit.com and in The Guardian. He’s won national awards for criticism and design from the Society for Features Journalism, the National Headliner Awards and the Society for News Design. Among the things he’s expensed for work: A Ouija board, a live chicken and plastic army men.